


I Believe

by RoseByAnyOtherName17



Series: The Lion, the Wolf and the Dragon [33]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family Approval, Family Feels, Fluff, Gifts, Love, Sparring, Teasing, dragon riding, talk of marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 19:01:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19340671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseByAnyOtherName17/pseuds/RoseByAnyOtherName17
Summary: "You deserve to have love, however it looks," Sansa murmured.





	I Believe

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for being so patient! We're gonna start moving toward the next war soon, but in the meantime have all of the fluff that I could not contain. I hope y'all enjoy it!

Arya spent the morning with Jon and Viserion outside of the castle, leaving Gendry to Sansa’s clutches after they walked out of Arya’s chambers just as her sister was passing. Arya couldn’t stifle her giggles at the expression of pure terror on Gendry’s face when Sansa’s face broke into a smile. “Come,” she said. “I’d like to get your measurements so I can make you warmer clothes. I saw what you arrived in.”

 

Gendry had protested as politely as he could, insisting he couldn’t take up her time that way. “Nonsense,” Sansa answered. “I’m not meeting with the Unsullied to discuss their rations until this afternoon.” She tucked her hand into Gendry’s elbow and led him away, turning back to wink at Arya before they rounded the corner. Arya grinned back, knowing full well that Sansa would have plenty of questions for her later. She thought she should probably dread it, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel anything other than happy.

 

Nymeria decidedly did not like Viserion, growling when he bumped his huge head against Arya’s shoulder in greeting. He huffed back dismissively, more interested in Jon attempting to climb onto his back. Ghost soon distracted the other direwolf, leading her in a race across the snow, while Arya watched Jon struggle. It was highly amusing, watching her usually graceful and poised brother clamber onto Viserion’s back and settling clumsily just behind his neck.

 

“Oh, you give it a go then,” Jon said unhappily, gripping the flared spike in front of him.

 

“Why not make a saddle?” Arya asked. “That’s what Tyrion has done. He’s still perfecting it, but he and Gendry came up with a fairly good design. Perhaps he could help you too.”

 

“We can fly without a saddle, getting up here is just the difficult part,” Jon retorted. “Are you coming or not?”

 

“He’s not as big as Drogon,” she pointed out, even as she reached up to take his outstretched hand and gingerly stepped onto Viserion’s politely outstretched wing. With little more grace than Jon had, she settled behind him. “Can he fly with both of us?” She wrapped her arms around his waist.

 

“I’m sure _he_ can,” Jon answered, “but I’m not so sure that _I’ll_ do very well with you holding onto me like that.” He tugged at her arm to make a point, and she loosened her grip just a little. “We’ve been flying just the two of us and it’s going okay – we don’t go very far or high though.”

 

“Afraid of the height?” Arya teased.

 

He twisted around just enough for her to catch the decidedly unamused look on his face. “I lived at the Wall for years and you think I’m afraid of heights?”

 

“It’s one thing to stand on a solid surface so high up and another to rely on a living creature to keep you from falling.”

 

She tightened her arms like a vice around him when instead of answering, he said something to Viserion that made the dragon dart forward unexpectedly and leap into the air.

 

She’d flown with Daenerys before, so it wasn’t a complete shock, but she’d felt more secure somehow with Gendry clutching her waist behind her. The ground fell away quickly as they eventually gained enough height to swoop over Winterfell – not that she was looking, because the freezing air stung her eyes moving around her so fast and Viserion’s creamy scales were hard to distinguish from the snow below them, moving as fast as they were. She tried to keep them open, blinking away the tears that kept forming and blurring her vision, and focused on the back of Jon’s head.

 

The nausea that accompanied their white surroundings blending together was just fading when Jon took them back down to the ground a little ways away from the open gates. The landing was softer than she expected, but she slid off in relief all the same, wiping at her eyes and the frozen tears on her cheeks. Nymeria and Ghost came bounding forward, the former snarling furiously until she herded Arya a good ten feet away from the dragon. Arya allowed it, mostly because she couldn’t feel her limbs.

 

“You’ll be sore tomorrow,” Jon warned her as they walked back toward the keep, leaving Viserion to take off again on his own. “It’s not like riding a horse.”

 

“You don’t say,” Arya shot back good-naturedly. “Why did you take me?”

 

“Well, you had a good point with the weight,” Jon said. “When we go to the Wall, I need to know how much he can hold. We need horses for men, so if he can carry a decent amount of supplies, I think it’ll help quite a bit.”

 

To Arya’s surprise, Gendry was already in the yard sparring with Brienne. They were well matched, both fighting with brute strength rather than on their toes the way Arya did. She wondered how he had gotten away from Sansa so quickly; she and Jon weren’t gone for very long.

 

If Jon noticed anything different about her, he hadn’t said anything, and she was grateful. Her thighs burned slightly from last night and she had woken up sticky and relaxed in a way that she never had been. Gendry grumbled about her breaking him, and that three times in one night was too much, but he hadn’t complained when she was climbing on top of him.

 

Their only trouble came when she had to pause for breath, sitting still in his lap, and he made to flip her over. She was halfway on her back when a flash of the kindly man and the Waif standing over her head while other Faceless Men cut into her came to her mind, and she pushed Gendry back. To his credit, he moved away immediately, but she caught him before he could get too far and swung her leg over his hips so they could continue. Afterward, she lay with her chin on his chest and explained the restraints they used to remove the two little parts of her that held the tiny seeds of children, pinning her wrists and ankles to the table. He kissed her forehead and stroked her hair away from her sweaty face. When the cold from outside finally began to creep in again, and even Arya was far too exhausted to stay awake any longer, he reached over her to pull the furs back up to their chins, and curled around her back with his face tucked into her hair.

 

They watched for a few minutes before Jon called for a draw. “My sister says you’re a decent smith,” he said to Gendry.

 

“I apprenticed with the best blacksmith in King’s Landing, Your Grace,” Gendry answered respectfully.

 

“Would you take a look at some of the designs for the dragonglass? Most of the daggers are turning out well, but there’s been some difficulty with axe heads and the glass won’t mold into swords.”

 

For the first time that day, Arya wondered if Jon and Sansa had conspired to separate them, because as she made to follow the men, her sister appeared as if from nowhere. “I have gifts for you,” she said, eyes glinting. She caught the glance Arya sent back toward the forge in the distance and added, “I’m certain your smith will sit and make something for you to fight with later. Come with me now.”

 

Another surprise – they went to Bran’s chambers rather than the solar or Sansa’s own. A room on the ground floor had been converted and several rigs designed to make it easier for him to get in and out of his chair placed strategically. At the moment, he sat with Lady Stoneheart at his desk, but he turned and smiled when Arya and Sansa entered with a quick knock.

 

The Lady had not done much more than briefly hold Arya’s hand the day before, but now she took it again and brought it to her lips, pressing a dry, cold kiss there. Arya’s heart broke again a little, seeing this ghost that was trying so hard to be her mother. She reached out to smooth back her coarse, brittle hair. “I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered.

 

Lady Stoneheart did not smile, but her eyebrows quirked in their familiar way, and it was enough.

 

“I made you these,” Sansa broke in, and Arya turned in time to take a cloak in hand, lined with fur on the inside and light grey. Unlike Sansa’s own, when Arya wrapped it around her shoulders, it did not brush the floor, but hung just above her ankles. “This goes with it,” Sansa added, holding up a leather jerkin not unlike Jon’s and thick breeches. “I’ll need to watch you spar in them later, to make any adjustments, but this should allow for free movement. I’ve made some for Jon and he likes them as well.”

 

A rush of warmth filled Arya’s chest. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

 

Sansa looked pleased. “There’s something else as well.” Something about her tone made Arya stiffen, and she caught Bran smothering a smile with his hand from the corner of her eye as Sansa took a few steps to get something hanging from the wall. It wasn’t a fur, as Arya had thought, but a dress, made for her slight figure. It was still much more practical than Sansa’s own, the hem hanging a few inches above the floor when she pressed it against her front, and the sleeves ended neatly at her wrists, unlike Sansa’s slightly looser, longer ones. Looking closer, it wasn’t plain black like she had thought; there was a the head of a direwolf sewn onto the chest in silver thread, just the bare outline.

 

“Sansa…”

 

“I have a patch for you as well, if you want it,” Sansa said in a rush. “Two, actually, one for you and one for Gendry.” She gently took the dress back and presented Arya the small patches, both stags. “I made them when Lady—when Mother told us you found him in the Riverlands. You said you were friends when you both escaped King’s Landing, and I remembered that Joffrey had all of Robert’s bastards killed at that time, and when I saw him with you I knew.”

 

“ _Robert and Lyanna_ ,” Lady Stoneheart said from her place next to Bran, hand against her throat.

 

“I’m going to make him something similar,” Sansa continued, speaking quickly, as though she was afraid that Arya would stop her. “I spoke to him about it this morning, when you were with Jon. If…” and now she hesitated, “if you’re okay with it. He said you would be, but I didn’t want to assume…”

 

Telling Myrcella that she loved Gendry and telling her family that she loved him suddenly seemed like two impossibly different things, but Arya said it anyways. Sansa’s smile was blinding, until Arya followed with, “Did he want a direwolf or a stag?”

 

“Neither,” Sansa answered, smile fading slightly. “He wanted a bull.”

 

Arya’s own lips twitched up as Bran provided an explanation: “It’s his chosen sigil. He never knew his father, and making armor and weapons for so many lords made him a little jaded, perhaps, so he gave himself one.”

 

“He had this helmet he made himself, for a long time, but he lost it when we were taken to Harrenhal.” Arya sometimes missed that helmet. “He certainly is stubborn enough to be a bull.”

 

“As are you,” Sansa remarked. “I don’t understand how you manage to get along.”

 

“They make each other more patient,” Bran interjected. “They are better for each other than Lyanna and Robert ever were. Gendry never wanted to make Arya anything else than she was.”

 

Arya shot him a look. “I don’t know that it will ever stop being a little scary when you do that.”

 

Bran smirked in response.

 

Arya looked back at the dress, holding it in hand. “It’s beautiful,” she told Sansa. “Thank you.”

 

“I know you might not get a lot of wear out of it,” Sansa conceded, “but I wanted you to have something pretty for feasts and the like. For celebrations, especially when we defeat the Night King.” No one mentioned that they might not defeat the army of the dead.

 

Arya didn’t know what else to do but hug her sister hard.

 

**

 

It would be another day or so before the Northern lords began to return with their men, so the night was an easy one. Gendry and Jon spoke quite a bit, mostly about weaponry and armor, but Arya caught her name once or twice during dinner. “You won’t talk her out of fighting,” Gendry said. She didn’t catch Jon’s reply.

 

No one said much about the two of them sitting close together, occasionally touching hands or tucking away a stray hair. Arya held out for as long as she could before she had to thumb away soot above Gendry’s eyebrow. It was as if the others were afraid to somehow disrupt their balance, especially once Gendry relaxed and seemed to forget that this was Arya’s family. When Arya pulled that move, however, Bran teased her mercilessly, and broke whatever tension had been hanging about. No one was concerned with looking at them for too long after that, or talking to them both at the same time.

 

Before Arya could retire with Gendry to her chambers, Sansa caught her arm and whispered, “There’s one more thing.” Arya gently pushed Gendry through her door, knowing full well that there was no fooling Sansa, and followed her sister to her own chambers.

 

There was another dress.

 

“It’s not finished,” Sansa said anxiously, “and there are no expectations of you. I think we’ve all come to learn that you will never be a lady, and no one will begrudge you your freedom, particularly me. I know, perhaps more than anyone, what it is to have your choices taken from you.” She took a deep breath. “All this is, is a choice. But I…Mother told us, when she came here, that she had seen what you were to each other. And Bran confirmed it.”

 

The dress wasn’t white, Arya realized, but the lightest of blues. This one would never be mistaken for anything other than what it was, with its long train. It would look unearthly against the snow. Her heart stuttered in her chest a little, but it wasn’t fear.

 

“You did this for me?” she managed to say around the lump in her throat.

 

Sansa came a little closer, hesitantly taking Arya’s hand. “I know it isn’t my place,” she said quietly. “I know that this has never been something you wanted, but I just want you to be happy. That’s all any of us want. And you…you found that, with Gendry.” Her voice shook a little. “After everything you’ve been through…when you came into the hall with him yesterday, I knew that he would be something you would keep forever, marriage or not.”

 

Arya closed her eyes against the burning there. “Did he…has he…?”

 

“I showed him this morning, when I was taking his measurements,” Sansa told her. “He would do anything you wanted. Arya, he loves you more than I have ever known anyone to love someone.”

 

“Me too,” Arya said softly. “I would give him anything I had the power to give.” She told Sansa the same thing she had told Myrcella, when she had asked. “I would give him the Stark name, if he asked, if he wanted it. I know that he still thinks on it, that because he doesn’t have a name…it doesn’t matter to me that he’s a bastard, it never did. But sometimes I worry that he doesn’t feel good enough.” She looked at Sansa desperately. “He _is_ good. And he hasn’t asked, because he knows how I feel, but he’s different – he’s _always_ been different. He calls me Milady because it makes me smile, and because it made me angry when we were young, but he never expected that of me. He knows that I’ve killed more men than I can count, and he watched me execute Cersei, but he has never, ever made me feel as though that were wrong. He was the first person who ever looked at me and just seemed to know who I was.”

 

“He doesn’t need a name to love you,” Sansa murmured, “and you don’t need to be married to love him.”

 

“Thank you,” Arya echoed from earlier. “Thank you for saying that, and for understanding. I never…I never thought that you and I would see eye to eye on anything like this.”

 

Sansa smiled a little sadly. “I’d always hoped to marry someone I loved. Instead I had two marriages, one that ended in blood and one that began in it. You deserve to have love, however it looks.”

 

They embraced then, and did not release each other for a long time.


End file.
